"The Internet of Things (IoT) is the biggest idea since the creation of the Worldwide Web more than 20 years ago.

Why? Because the "things" are not just desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. The "things" come from the world of sensor-driven Big Data that is even now expanding the size of the Web beyond what we thought just a few years ago.How big? Estimates from everyone from Gartner to the US Government foresee a 100X time increase -- then a 1,000X increase -- in Web traffic over the next few years. The world will need hundreds of billions of dollars of new servers, memory, storage, and data centers. The challenge to software developers will be increasing as never before."

Obviously, there is a business need and benefit to connect many "things".
It is already technically possible, in fact it was possible for a while.

The danger is that over-eager big businesses may end up making too complex solutions, that may not be a good platforms for the long-term.
Think "SOA". The "industry" needs a new buzzword every year.

Before TCP/IP and Ineternet, there was many "enterprise-ready", solid networking solutions. Does anybody remembers ISO/OSI now?
And then, before web's simple HTML/HTTP, there was many services on early (academic) Internet. Anybody remembers "Gopher" now?

If there was not "WWW", Internet would not be what it is now.
Technology would improve, but much slower, because it was complex and closed. Even "Mobile" would not be what it is, first iPhone's was about web browsing.

IoT is a useful push, but what it really needs it a higher level abstraction platform, like WWW was for Internet.
HTML & HTTP ware essential to make TCP/IP popular.

When WWW was created, there was no shortage of attempts to utilize "hypertext", and to connect distant networks. WWW was "special" because it was simple, and open. So simple in fact to be imagined and created by a single person, who was solving a real need at the time, in a generic way. Higher level of abstraction.

For IoT to work well on the long run, a simple "data smart web" platform is needed, and something like a Mosaic & Netscape web browser was.IoT is an extension of Internet, and "Data Smart Web" is an extension of the "Web."

Not an academic "semantic web", but a simple extension of WWW to work well with data from devices. Could it be already here, waiting to be "discovered", just like HTML was a simplification of SGML, and HTTP resembled other protocols of that time. So what is a "SGML for data" today?